A highly regarded and internationally recognized scholar, topics of Banks’ wide-ranging research include national security and counterterrorism law; laws of war and asymmetric warfare; drones and targeted killing; transnational crime and corruption; cybersecurity, cyberespionage, and cyber conflict; human security; emergency and war powers; emergency preparedness and response; prosecuting terrorists; civilian-military relations; and government surveillance and privacy. Banks is most recently the co-author (with Stephen Dycus) of Soldiers on the Home Front: The Domestic Role of the American Military(Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2016). He is the author, co-author, and/or editor of numerous other titles, including National Security Law (Aspen, 2016) and Counterterrorism Law (Aspen, 2016)—books that have helped set the parameters for these fields of study—as well as Counterinsurgency Law: New Directions in Asymmetric Warfare(Oxford UP, 2012) and New Battlefields/Old Laws: Critical Debates on Asymmetric Warfare (Columbia UP, 2011).

The subjects of Banks’ more than 100 published book chapters and articles range from the military use of unmanned aerial vehicles, to terrorism in South America, to the role of the military in domestic affairs. Recent writing includes “Regulating Cyber Conflict;” “Regulating Drones: Military Law and CIA Practice and the Shifting Challenges of New Technologies;” “Exceptional Courts in Counterterrorism: Lessons from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA);” and “Programmatic Surveillance and FISA: Of Needles in Haystacks.” Additionally, Banks has spearheaded numerous interdisciplinary research projects for INSCT, including New Battlefields, Old Laws: From the Hague Conventions to Asymmetric Warfare; Controlling Economic Cyber Espionage; and Countering Foreign Terrorist Fighters, a collaboration with the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (UN CTED).